AN INCIDENT OF THE LATE WAR

The latest accounts to hand state that the value of the ammunition used by Admiral
Dewey at the bombardment of Manila was only £9,400 and by the Atlantic fleet at
Santiago about £20,000. At Manila 5,681 projectiles are now said to have been fired
and at Santiago 7,581 shells.

"During the latter period of the Spanish-American War, the supply of ammunition in
the Spanish Camp was so short that a member of their Ordnance Department devised a
scheme for providing the necessary ingredient, Saltpetre, and as an experiment
inserted the following advertisement in a Manila Newspaper:--

"'The ladies of Manila are respectfully requested to preserve their Chamber Lye as
it is very needful to the cause of Spain in the manufacture of nitre, a necessary
ingredient of gunpowder. Wagons with barrels will be sent to residences daily to
collect and remove the same.'

"(Sgd.) 'Don Camara'"

Don Camara, Don Camara, you are a funny creature;
You've given to this cruel war a new and curious feature.
You'd have us think, while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The women (bless the pretty dears) should save their P for nitre.

Don Camara, Don Camara, where did you get the notion
To send your barrels round the town to gather up the lotion?
We though the woman's duty done in keeping house and diddling,
But now you'd put the pretty dears to patriotic piddling.

Don Carama, Don Camara, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest way of making your Saltpetre.
The thing's so very queer, you know, gunpowder-like and cranky
That when a lady "jerks her brine," she shoots a bloody Yankee.

"One copy of the above was sent home to New York where a wag saw it and sent
the following reply:

Don Camara, Don Camara, we've read your song and story.
How women's tears in all these years have sprinkled fields of glory;
But ne'er before did women help their braves in deeds of slaughter
Till Spanish beauties dried their tears and went to making water.

No wonder, Don, your boys are brave,-- who would not be a fighter,
If every time he shot a gun he used his sweetheart's nitre?
And vice versa, what would make a Yankee soldier sadder
Than dodging bullets fired from a pretty woman's bladder?

We've heard it said a subtle smell still lingered in this powder
And as the smoke grew thicker and the din of battle louder
That there was found in this compound a serious objection,--
The soldiers could not sniff it without getting an erection.

'Tis clear now why desertion is common in our ranks;
An Arctic nature's needed to withstand Dame Nature's pranks.
A Yankee boy can't stand the press when once he's had a smell;
He's got to have a "bit" or bust, -- the cause can go to Hell.

Manila, P.I.; July 4th, 1899

A broadside in the Gordon Inferno of the Library of Congress' folksong archive, No,
3916, "An Incident of the Late War," updates the song to the Spanish-American War.

See online here:

https://archive.org/details/1917gordoninfernocollection/page/38/mode/2up?q=3916